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Logo Design

Most people think of branding as a logo. And most people think of a logo as visual identity. A logo is one component of your visual identity system which makes up one part of your brand. A great example of this is Weiden and Kennedy Sao Paulo new visual identity which is shown in the video below. They break down the inspiration for the logo design and then show how it is translated across a series of touch points as part of a larger identity system. No this doesn’t establish their branding. Branding is much larger than just a logo, visual identity system or editorial voice. Branding encompasses everything that establishes a relationship with a product, company, or service. The example in the video is one hell of an awesome logo and identity system though.

I never post about politics, and I don’t want this to turn into a hate bashing flame war where people rant about their political ideologies. This is a design post and yes it going to talk about how fucked up the Trump/Pence logo is, and I’m not even going to address the absolutely half-assed quality of the overall imagery. I am simply going to talk about the shit production value that went into this.

For a guy worth billions, who always demands the highest quality, The Donald pulled a massive boner with this, and should probably fire the art director that approved this final art. I could go on about the phallic nature of the T inserted into the P but there has been enough commentary online about that already. I could go on about the generally poor quality of the design, but I’m sure there will be months of commentary about that on every design site known to man.

This is about fundamentals. The fundamentals that come from knowing your craft and being a graphic designer.

Nothing is aligned. It is a visual mess, that creates tension and visual stress. There are issues with the spacing in the T/P that is not the same as the spacing in the red and white stripes. The inclusion of the white block in the lower section of the P breaks the visual flow of the two letters creating more visual stress. The fact that the final red stripe doesn’t run under the blue component makes the logo feel incomplete.

There are issues with the spacing in the T/P that is not the same as the spacing in the red and white stripes. The inclusion of the white block in the lower section of the P breaks the visual flow of the two letters creating more visual stress. The fact that the final red stripe doesn’t run under the blue component makes the logo feel incomplete.

The inclusion of the white block in the lower section of the P breaks the visual flow of the two letters creating more visual stress. The fact that the final red stripe doesn’t run under the blue component makes the logo feel incomplete.

The fact that the final red stripe doesn’t run under the blue component makes the logo feel incomplete.

I could go on and on, but the issue here is, this looks like it was thrown together, and someone somewhere has had to have known for at least two weeks who the final three choices were going to be. They had time to review this, and fix the final art. This is an example of either bad design or laziness. I don’t care if you hate the client. You shouldn’t take on the job if you aren’t going to give it your all.

Bad design is bad design end of story. It took five minutes working with the exact same image to at least polish this turd into something that at least reads a little better.

Over the last seven years, Jens Müller has been collecting and compiling modern logos created from 1940 to 1980. As Müller puts it, this was the golden age of the modernist aesthetic in design, architecture, art, product design. And to a point he is right. Some of the most visually memorable brand marks and logos come from this four decade period. Müller’s collection is what makes up the content of Aachen’s 6000 page tome Logo Modernism.

The book covers pretty much every business and organization of note, and represents a sweeping retrospective modernism and how the style changed over time. Broken into specific sections the book’s main chapters cover Geometric, Effect, and Typographic. Each sub-chapter breaks down each style even further into sections such as dots and squares, overlays, alphabet, color, etc.The book features an introduction from Jens Müller on the history of logos, and an accompanying essay by R. Roger Remington on modernism and graphic design. In addition there are series of designer profiles on masters of the craft Paul Rand, Yusaku Kamekura, and Anton Stankowski focusing on their legendary work.

In typical Taschen heritage, the book is physically huge. at 10 by 14 inches in size and 432 pages of content. And as always from Taschen, the book is multilingual. It’s available for pre-order and this just made my list of books to add to the reference library. Oh and it’s affordable. Just $69.00 on the Taschen site.

Counter -Print has released a new book titled Alphabet Logo. It is a compendium of logos designed, with letters from what else… the alphabet.

The book contains over 500 logos from some of the worlds best designers, showcasing companies like; Bond Creative, Bruce Mau Design, Hype Type Studio, Pentagram, Stockholm Design Lab, Wolff Olins and more. It looks like a great design reference book and a ton of inspiration.

We see them everyday. They are impossible to avoid, and yet most of us rarely think of them. I’m talking about automotive logos. The badge that is on the front and rear of almost every single piece of rolling stock in the world.

Those logos are not just the visual symbol of the manufacturer, they are the brand that represents what you think of in terms of quality, luxury, economy, fit and finish.

The infographic below from Car Dealer Review shows how various automotive logos have evolved over time. Some subtlety, others radically. Some of the more interesting examples are the older and smaller brands like Fiat, or Aston Martin.

As a designer I work with color every day. Color is one of the most powerful communication devices that designers use. It offers an instantaneous response in the form of non-verbal communication and helps convey meaning in and messaging in logo design. So it is highly important for design professionals in all fields to use color appropriately and understand the meaning behind the colors they choose in their projects.

Our minds are inherently wired to respond to color in certain ways, and we are programmed from an early age to respond to color based on cultural ethnography’s as well. Color helps to shape our feelings and emotional responses to visual stimulus, and according to studies, color affects more than just our mood. Color has the ability to change our buying habits as well. Studies have shown that color can invoke as much as an 80 per cent change in motivation when it comes to online shopping, advertising, and marketing campaigns.

While the perception of color is in many ways subjective, there are some color effects have universal meaning. The infographic below from Canadian design firm Muse is a great example of how different colors are perceived in relation to logo design. Just a little food for thought on Monday morning.

Four minutes of Paula Scher, the principal of design consultancy Pentagram, brought to you by the people at Gestalten. This is a pretty straight forward interview on her thinking about identity design, and design in general. You may or my not be familiar with her name, but I guarantee you have come in contact with her work. Scher has developed visual identities and branding systems for Microsoft, Coca-Cola, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Public Theater, and many more that you will probably recognize in this short film. You can never have to much knowledge and insight in your brain, and this little interview is guaranteed to educate, and stimulate your gray matter.